John M. Martinis attended the University of California at Berkeley from 1976 to 1987,
where he received two degrees in Physics: B.S. (1980) and Ph.D. (1987). His thesis
research focused on macroscopic quantum tunneling in Josephson Junctions. After
completing a post-doctoral position at the Commisiariat Energie Atomic in Saclay,
France, he joined the Electromagnetic Technology division at NIST in Boulder. At NIST
he was involved in understanding the basic physics of the Coulomb Blockade, and
worked to use this phenomenon to make a new fundamental electrical standard based on
counting electrons. While at NIST he also invented series-array SQUID amplifiers. In
1993 he started an effort building high-resolution x-ray microcalorimeters based on
superconducting sensors and series-array SQUIDs. This effort has grown to include
applications in x-ray microanalysis and astrophysics, and optical and infrared
astronomy. More recently he started a project to build a new fundamental standard of
temperature based on noise thermometry, and in 2001 he helped initiate a project to
use a microcalorimeter optical photon counter with high quantum efficiency for
quantum communications. Since 2002 his research effort has focused on building a
quantum computer using Josephson junctions. He has pioneer many important
demonstrations, including entangled states, Bell state violation, Fock and arbitrary
photon generation, photon NOON states, and the quantum von Neumannn and RezQu
architecture. In 2010, he was awarded with collaborator Andrew Cleland the “Science
breakthrough of the year” for the first demonstration of the quantum ground state in
a mechanical oscillator system. In 2014 he was awarded the London Prize for
low-temperature physics research on superconducting quantum bits. Dr. Martinis was a
NIST Fellow, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. At the University of
California, Santa Barbara he currently holds the Wooster Chair in experimental
physics. In 2014 he was awarded the London Prize for his pioneering work on
superconducting qubits. In 2014, Dr. Martinis joined Google to head up their
quantum-hardware effort. The aim of this research is to build the first useful
quantum computer.